I think Fathomless Warlock would make for a great control warlock. Tentacle of the Deep gives you a good use of a bonus action for added damage + speed reduction and later damage reduction. Grasping Tentacles gives to a free casting of a souped up Evards. The expanded spell list gives you great control and blasting spells like Bigby hand, Lightning Bolt, and Cone of Cold.
Pair it with invocations like Repelling Blast, Lance of Lethargy, or the one that pulls enemies and you can put foes wherever you need them. It sounds like a lot of fun on paper.
I lived that dream. Get an item of spider climbing, take repelling blast, and get Spell Sniper. You'll be knocking enemies out of cover while hiding behind the chandelier.
Far Step is so effing cltuch.
Our DM was using a random shop roller. It spat out the Cloak of Arachnidae. It cost all my gold, but I was never happier. I reskinned it to be a 'cloak of octopoda', though.
Having the Actor Feat and Mask of Many Faces is never more fun when you can look at the ceiling of a room three stories up through the window, teleport it like Nightcrawler, stick to the ceiling like Spiderman, and change your appearance like Mystique as you slink your way in.
I'm flattered! As long as I have you, though I will warn [there is a downside](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/vxk3xt/my_powers_are_peak_when_we_split_the_party_awesome/#lightbox) to this build.
I somehow imagine "slippers of spider climb" as looking like my grandpa's slippers he put on every morning fresh out of bed...but then he takes the long way across the ceiling to get the paper.
Have you considered how the attracting blast works if you are on the ceiling above them? Not a common situation, and not one all DM's would allow, just ragdolling the enemy up into the air and getting a free 10ft drop.
You know, I want you in my character-creation think-tank; that occurred to me and I adore the idea. But at the end of the day I had agendas with my invocations, and a once a round 'tug' wasn't even making the top ten.
My DM was kind enough to toss on a D6 if I Repelled someone into a worthy surface, and that shit happens every hit.
Can confirm, played an Eladrin Sorlock 6/10 white draconic sorcerer and fathomless warlock. Played up the whole frost thing with sleet storm, cone of cold, repelling blast, Lance of lethargy, tentacles for days... It was so much fun.
My very first attack roll (came in at level 4/7) was an elven accuracy - familiar helping - inflict wounds at a 4th level spell slot that crit and 1 shot killed a Mind Flayer. 12d10 damage and I rolled well.
Sorcerers; especially the aberrant mind and clockwork soul are stupid powerful.
I feel like they don’t get the same love as the wizards and the bards but if you use the metamagic right they solve all the problems.
One thing I love about sorcerers is that just having Subtle Spell and any teleport spell makes you impossible to contain as long as you’re conscious.
Doesn’t come up often, but it’s fun.
Vortex Warp is an extremely fun spell, even if it doesn’t work on yourself.
My party’s Paladin and I have been doing a combo against flyers where he readies a grapple and then I vortex warp him above them
Subtle Spell is my single favorite mechanic in 5e. Sure, you can do things like cast Phantasmal Force on the shitbag prince at that fancy dinner you were invited to. Did he pass the first save? Just do it again! As far as everyone else is concerned he just went mad paranoid, seeing a ghostly face laughing at him above the table. And it couldn't have been you, you were clearly stuffing your face at the time.
But more importantly you can super petty. One time one of the party tried to high five a guard so I subtle'd a suggestion that he should hit him back. The guard was confused why he did that but it's not like I cast a spell or anything :)
The player still has to be smart and resourceful.
I barely used any of my resources while going through a dungeon unless it was absolutely necessary. Then the rest of the table wondered why I was so powerful at the end of the adventuring day; because I saved all my firepower
There's no way a slightly-above-average-archer-damaging, samey-EB+AB-turns Sorlock is touching an Aberrant Mind in tier 2. Mostly I'm talking about fun turns of breaking the action economy with great spells. But secondarily, they aren't touching sorcs for power either.
We don't need tanks, we don't need heals, we don't need buffs. We got a sorc. This dude's over here spamming Twin Dissonant Whispers so we're all smiting/sneak attacking/stunning off turns and we've hardly been touched. Are they going to open with Twin mind sliver + upcast Banishment? Slow? Summon Aberration? Evards? Confusion? Next rounds are twinned/upcast Mind Slivers, Commands, Dissonant Whispers, Tasha's Mind Whips, Psychic Lances, and Synaptic Statics. Incoming damage defeated.
Oh dang. Sorry bard, AM just mind controlled that guy with componentless Suggestion, so you don't need to persuade them. You charmed that other guy? In this crowded room, without Subtle? Oh, AM sees his thoughts, and now we know where to scry on them tomorrow, so we don't need to go check out their place anymore. But let's do it anyway. We got componentess Hex for our sneaking and persuading/deceiving. I failed a skill check? Inspiration? Naw, let me reroll it real quick first. Naw, I haven't used any slots yet today, but I'm getting low on sorc points now and might need to eat a middle slot or two.
shit, they saw us (or more likely "you shouldn't have told *them* about *that*"). Let me erase their memory? Oh, you got that now too? I'll erase their friends' memory of you casting that with obvious components just now. And I can comfortably cast that 5th level Modify Memory 6 or 7 more times if this is all we're doing today. Yeah, that was with Heightened factored in.
I think they get a bad rap because both wild magic and draconic sorcerer are very...bland, as is storm sorcerer, so when your first 3 subclasses that are released for you are somewhat boring (wild magic as printed is pretty mid because it relies on the DM to proc your abilities) and the 4th subclass just makes your primary issue even worse, the fact that you have 15 total spells and now you have to choose 15 spells from two spell lists, it can paint the whole class in a bad light, aberrant mind and clockwork are both good, but they're good because they give the sorcerer an expanded spell list more than anything else I've found.
I played an evil sorceress (the kind of evil that is meant to fit into a good party) for one campaign and we had good Paladin in the party. It was a very very very handy combination. We could get all the NPCs motives and moral compasses worked out pretty quickly and get creative in our problem solving.
Thief rogues.
They may not be the best rogues but I'll never forget bumrushing the bbegs main wizard henchmen, ripping his necklace of fireballs off, immediately detonating it blowing him up and taking no damage because you know I'm a rogue.
At 13 thief rogues arguably become the best scroll users in the game, able to use scrolls from any caster's list.
Get arcana proficiency from your background and take expertise in it and boom, you're almost never failing a scroll check.
If you have friends willing to make scrolls for you, you can basically act as a full caster and rogue simultaneously.
Thief Rogue in my party. We had to plant a bug into the throne room of some royalty. We sent him in alone to plant it, never rolled below a 20. Turned what our DM intended to be a difficult challenge DESIGNED to fuck us over a little, into a literal cake walk.
People online seem to think Fighter isn't a good class but across 3700+ hours of 5e D&D online and several in person games I don't have exact hours on, I've found that the fighter is an incredible class.
The fighter in the party is The Badass, when everyone else is down or rendered useless, the fighter solos bosses that would TPK the rest of the party if the invincible badass fighter wasn't there to deal 100+ damage a turn.
100% everyone seems to cry that fighters and martials in general cant keep up with casters but every power build is some kind of gish.
Most of the time they use some silly PVP scenario to justify why fighters are bad. That has bothing to do with how the game is actually played and designed
I think most of the issue there isn’t with combat. Martials and casters are both competent in combat. Martials tend to be better at directly doing damage, while casters are usually better at control and buffing. A combo of both will do better than any one individually.
Out of combat though, casters are faaaaar better than martials. Casters can have everyone communicating telepathically while shifting planes and summoning invisible allies to scout ahead, while martials can at best like, get people to like them more.
My fighter has solved lots of problems with a good bit of intimidation....
It's surprising what you can solve with a good, implied threat. And if your DM doesn't let you use your skills with alternative attributes, like Strength(Intimidation) because you just took a metal shield and casually folded it in half with strong eye contact, then you're really missing out.
Also...the only character whoever shifted us through the planes was my fighter because he was f****** about with an artifact he found. We had a lot of fun getting back. And this is the part where I say magic items and artifacts really change the game And bridge the gap in utility between Martials and casters.
Yes, but a charisma caster can intimidate just as well, except they can supplement it with spells like enhance ability or charm person. And if your DM has to go out of their way to give martials more or better magic items just to bridge that gap, that only proves how much more powerful casters are.
But the thing is casters can do that too. But they also have their toolbox. Casters have a bunch of spells for specific scenarios. prestigi… stuff. Mage hand, message, guidance, mending, shape water and thaumaturgy. And that’s just csntrips that have nice rp features.
Every power build you have seen is some sort of gish either a) those are extremely popular and/or b) Paladin 6 is really important so building around making all of Paladins major weaknesses (slow slot progression, forced into str melee for their good damage etc) are problems worth figuring out (whether that's with Hexblade, Sorcerer, both or even Bard).
In general fighter is seen as the best pure dpr class (using cbe+ss) if you ignore conjure animals, skeleton shenanigans etc, which obviously have problems of their own (especially with resistance to nonmagical bps and it is a lot cheaper to equip one fighter than to get like 8 moon-touched shortbows). The class just sadly doesn't offer much more in the way of utility and damage is seen as a less important thing considering everything else you can do in 5e (like Peace Wizard).
Right???
My damage is never peak with my build, but when the caster creates a hazard and I just hold a monster in it while pounding on it the damage is extreme....
Wild that anyone is including the most often power gamed classes here. "Sorcerer and warlock are overlooked." In what world?
Here's a hot take. Monk and ranger are always effective choices and are often quite strong. Wizards are the most often garbage characters I see in games.
Wizard's have a problem of always having the wrong solution ready, and they can't take hits if they aren't built for it.
Skill ceiling is much higher, but there's no floor...
I played a Wizard for years, and it was fun. I constantly had to deal with the DM nerfing my spells and decision paralysis on my turn. I'm never playing another.
mhmm... alternatively, it's not that poor of design. Original ranger is specialized, making it slightly less versatile for sandbox buffets, but amazing for a majority of modules. Tasha's ranger caters to the need for more flexible rangers. There's nothing overtly poor about it and that shows in gameplay.
Yeah, some aspects of it are bad...and yet you can just set those aside and it's still good. I totally understand hating on \*looks it up\* "Primevel Awareness."
Man...how do you even use that and why does it cost a spell slot? But, if you just forget it exists you still have a really good class.
People always say the Monk is weak but in any campaign I've been in where there is a Monk they end up being MVP of combat more than anyone else.
And with the Tasha's rules you can make an extremely effective WIS focused Ranger.
Most people are pretty chill about letting others do what they want.
That being said, I've only had people give me crap for playing a single class Warlock. I've played Ranger and had people fuss because I wasn't a Gloomstalker, but it was nothing compared to the amount of times I've had total strangers try to educate me about Warlocks only being viable as a dip class.
Those people do not understand the POWER OF THE NAP!
Seriously, though, I can't tell you how many of my DMs encounters I fucked up with my warlock because he was expecting Pew Pew, and he got the Nova instead.
Then he's like, "At least it's over..." But I took a nap.
Right?? I was in a game where we (4 characters at level 5) came across a military fort that was suffering from a disease outbreak that also lead to zero food supplies. I asked the DM if he had any short rest requirements. He didn't.
I was playing a Celestial Warlock with Lesser Restoration. Druid, Fighter, and Rogue set up a pretty decent camp nearby while I cured two people and napped every hour. We moved the healthy people to the camp. Then the druid essentially power washed the whole fort and we moved them back in. It was supposed to be this whole quest chain with rare medical ingredients, risk of getting sick, and weeks of labor. We were out of there before the week was out. Everyone was well fed, healthy, and knew what to do to avoid getting sick again. It was pretty great.
DM over there going, "I forgot to plan around their base features again... FUCK!"
I always find that hillarious, but that's when you just roll and introduce a new wrinkle or a new hook to a place that's more complicated.
I locked two PCs in a room with a deadly poisonous trap.
A level 10 Monk and a Wizard with a Periapt of Proof Against Poison.
Womp womp.
In the same dungeon, I thought I had them because they had taken a Radiant Idol prisoner and couldn't use any type of flight. I made an entire water puzzle based room. Monk just carried everyone across the surface of the water at a brisk jog.
Warlocks are powerhouses through tier 2 (and they don't really slouch much after that either). Warlock 11 is one of the better power bumps in the game (it's bc of the extra slot. The extra ray of EB is just nice to have by comparison).
There are two problems: lack of imagination and short rests.
The first problem is solvable by recognizing that warlocks should be casting more level-appropriate spells per day than most other full casters. They can do more than spam slightly above average archer damage. But so many are spending their slots to just buff that archer damage a bit.
The second problem can be solved by any level headed DM. Short rests are part of the class's design, and a couple should be available most days. Some days it won't be reasonable to short rest much, but those should be the exceptions, not the norm.
>it was nothing compared to the amount of times I've had total strangers try to educate me about *Warlocks only being viable as a dip class.*
Which just prove they don't get anything about Warlocks, and probably not many about the game in general. xd
Genie warlock with pact of chain is tons of fun. At level 10 the entire party can come with you into your genie vessel and chill while an invisible flying imp familiar carries the vessel anywhere you wanna go.
Muffling a caster to prevent them from using verbal components isn't just at the extreme end of the grapple rules, it isn't directly available at all in the rules themselves. When we get to the nebulous area of "DM may I?" like this, it becomes incredibly easy for different tables to have different opinions on different builds, because they're effectively playing different games. (I'll add that at any table where muffling with a grapple is permitted, if the players initially found it cool, the casters of the party will almost certainly change their mind if the enemies start employing the same tricks.)
"DM may I?" is a valid approach for actions that are cartoonish, unrealistic, or undefined.
This is the case of an extremely standard, real-world kind of action. A big beefy guy putting his hands over someone's mouth is straightforward. It's the DM's obligation to come up with a reasonable dice roll to represent the action, not to say "that's simply not a thing that can be done."
Verbal spell components are an explicit and intentional weakness for spellcasters.
It's a valid approach, yes, but it also makes the premise of this post moot. "This build is much more effective than people think it is" is obviously going to be true if you're playing by a different set of rules than everyone else.
And while it may be realistic for a grappler to successfully muffle a caster, balance-wise, it's a considerable problem, as the grappler shuts down the caster with little to no possible counterplay. (Even in cases where the caster has *hold person*, a rather extreme PvP spell, a reasonably built grappler is usually considerably more likely to shut down the caster and keep them locked down to be unable to attempt *hold person* than they are to fail twice in a row against *hold person*, and the caster can run out of *hold person* while the grappler cannot run out of grapple attempts.)
Extreme? Id say its the basic application of the rules.
Casting spells that explicitly require hand signs or verbal components is impossible if your ability to do either is taken.
"Extreme" isn't my wording, it's the OP's. There are no defined rules for muffling a creature physically (and even in the case of manacles, "bind" is never properly defined for how it interacts with any other mechanics), so we are entirely in the space of what the DM decides for their tables, which makes any discussion of, "Wow, this build is really slept-on in the community," moot.
It's an improvised action, so it's totally up to the DM. But RAW, you can make the attempt as an improvised action. DM get's to decide how that plays out, like maybe in his version of the rules a mumble is enough to cast...
Or maybe it's only sort of effective and the mage has to make a check to cast?
Or maybe he just says no.
It's good game design to give the martials more interesting things to do.
Plus it will showcase my ridiculous Aberrant Mind powers.
*"You hear "Really?" in your brain, seemingly from nowhere, while the Aberrant Mind looks a little bored but also slightly annoyed that you stuck a gag in their mouth. Roll a DC 18 Wis save. No, you have disadvantage. You didn't see a spell being cast, but you just said "Sorry" and you let them go. Now you seem to be straightening out their shirt and are wiping off the smudge you left on their face"*
Heavy Armor Master is one of the most slept on Feats in the game. Over the course of normal campaigns it prevents hundreds of damage, ones that go on for more than a few levels creeps into the thousands of damage prevented.
Maximize by going all-in on a Bear Barbarian (which "resistance to all damage when you Rage" supercedes the standard "get benefits while raging as long as not wearing heavy armor).
Or just someone with Warding Bond. \^\^
Even at higher level as long as you have resistance it's still worth. And even when it becomes insufficient to make any difference over a day, it still carried the character all the way up to that point. :)
I've heard good things about the spores druid, but I think Druid's in general are just less popular because of the roleplay aspects.
Meanwhile they're just over there being a chill nature wizard.
Spores druid is one of my favourite classes flavor-wise, mechanically I made a few timy homebrew tweaks to get that feel there. Didn't play the character yet, but am looking forward to it.
Every spore Druid player I’ve met has felt that it’s a melee-oriented class that doesn’t work well as one, and so I told my wife that if she ever wanted to play one I’d homebrew Shillelagh to scale like every other cantrip so melee was more viable.
That's not bad tbh, the homebrew I took inspiration from relied of Primal Savagery instead and a homebrew cantrip "Enfeebling Hand". Alongside the other tweaks it really leans into the melee playstile as a spore druid should. Still not a full front liner but it does the job it was intended to do.
Take a look at the improvenents made by Bone Wizard on youtube. He has takes on many subclasses and ways to make them better in some ways.I think what he did is pretty good, love the mechanics.
Then I added some of my own stuff alongside it, or rather tweaked stuff, more for flavor than pure mechanics.
I'm blessed with a DM that loves to homebrew himself and when his players homebrew, as long as it's not broken and makes sense, but other DMs will need a talk before letting this play.
Alongside that there's a homebrew spell "Volatile Reanimation" that really works well alongside the character, I found it on the UnearthedArcana subreddit I think.
I did a Spores Druid/Swarmkeeper Ranger, Tortle. He held a shield made of bones and was flavored as a plaguebearing hermit who specialized in melee, using his spores and swarm to control the battlefield.
He rekt.
Hunter Ranger, after seeing one in play i can tell you that 95% of people that discuss dnd cant comprehend that having a bad feature like Favorite terrain doesnt make the class bad. It makes that feature not good.
Hunters mark and steelwind strike are phenomenal spells in combat and especially hunters mark is such a low reasourse cost for the damage you get from it. They add extra damage once a turn, and they get THE strongest AOE attack for martials at 11.
Hunters have always been playable and just fine even before tashas and especially now even if gloomstalker is definitely stronger
>Hunters mark and steelwind strike are phenomenal spells
Hunter's Mark is not a phenomenal spell. In fact, it's a trap once you hit level 5-7 or so.
Steel Wind Strike is good, but the problem is a ranger can't have it until tier 4, which almost nobody gets to play. (Meanwhile, a wizard gets it at level 9, which lots of people get to play, and a gish can use the spell just as effectively as a ranger but 8 levels earlier and more times per day.)
Also i disagree about hunters mark being a trap, i think its just as potent to use a long bow and hunters mark and use the ASI to max your stats or take another potant feat as it is to take Xbow expert and use a hand crossbow
I played in a game with a Hunter Ranger for 3 years. He consistently put down lots of damage every turn. I've always been amazed at how people crap on the Ranger class over and over again when it has things like the ability to do an extra 1d8 of damage against any enemy not at full health, a fighting style, and spells...
I mean, there's definitely a divide between martials and casters, but people called the Ranger the worst class in D&D for years, and it's just not....Now they've switched to being down on the Monk.
To be fair, monks are mechanically the weakest in combat unless you take excessive sirt rests but even then other classes benefit from short reat spamming more
Monks have always been in a bit of a blind spot for the developers, but I've never met a monk player that cared. They just keep kicking people with a smile on their faces.
>but people called the Ranger the worst class in D&D for years, and it's just not....Now they've switched to being down on the Monk.
And equally wrong in their evaluation of it as they were with the Rangers. But hey, actual rationale is not the forte of theorycrafters considering they conveniently put aside somewhere around 90% of every factor one should consider to make a proper evaluation (and since it would be a huge pain to work out, nobody does it xd).
Once sharpshooter is in the mix, I'd be hard pressed to find a character that has more impact over the course of a campaign than a fighter. Casters are amazing and have turns that swing fights. Fighters do work every round.
Cool, hypnotic pattern is up on 3/5 dudes. We still have to kill them all, right?
Oh yeah fighter is one of the best cleaners in the game and it is among the best users of strong buffs in the game like Peace Clerics (or God Wizards) double bless or part of a twinned haste.
They are also the only full martial that can really choose when they want to go full nova with action surge, instead of being forced into relatively similar turn by turn output like Barbarian/Rogue (or Monk who has to spend ressources to not fall behind).
The only thing that can really get more dpr without heavy ressource use (like smiting every turn) is minion spam (and even that uses higher level spells with long durations).
Rangers are good, at least with the alternate abilities in Tasha's book.
I tried a Ranger in a lvl 5 one-shot once and thought "damn, this is stronger than a fighter"
The internet loves to shit on Monks all day long. My Shadow Monk slaps. I also get to do cool shit all the time. Jump off of buildings, wall run, dance across water, return projectiles to sender, stun multiple targets in a round, resource free teleportation etc etc etc.
For real, the Shadow Monk is wild. Probably my favorite character in my roster. My DM was kind enough to let mine train in blind fighting during downtime as well, so now he can hit 'em with Darkness and go to town.
Yeah, it's almost like having the highest numbers isn't really what D&D is about. You can be a very effective and fun class by being adaptable and versatile to different situations as long as you as a player know how to do that effectively. And that's kind of the Monk's whole thing.
I tend to like spells that are not used that much. I used Erupting earth on a floor that had a hole due to a previous battle and caused it to collapse under an enemy (my character was in a one on one battle, and the opponent said that if I impressed him, he would hear my character's plea, and so he did in the end, even if my character got defeated, since he was a sorcerer and the lack of space was a disadvantage).
Also, many teleportation spells are broken if you prepare the spell on the previous turn to react to an enemy attack. With that, Vortex Warp and Scatter are amazing to nullify attacks against the party (You can't concentrate on another spell, especially haste, if you do that, as preparing a spell requires your concentration)
Another thing that I found out, this one with two casters, using spells that have in their text that they can freeze water as a spell prepared to cast (like Otiluke's freezing sphere) and tidal wave, freedom of the waves or tsunami, you can encase enemies in ice as the water freezes around them
I personally find good old boring human race very underrated. By far it was the easiest thing for me to role play and it gave me so many options on building my character around the campaign as the campaign developed which was natural in their character development arc.
Like yeah sure their stats are a bit lower and they only know common language but who cares, they don’t have the restrictions that other races get. Humans are pretty open to anything and any direction.
It's not a build/spell or class, but I never see it in posts about broken feats or in classical internet combos ctrl C ctrl V like hexblade: Heavy Armor Master.
When I started to play I always think bad about this feat. Like, plus 1 to strength is definitely good but -3 in non-magical attacks? It's would be useless after 7th level where every enemy will have magical weapons...
Spoiler: Ancient Dragons don't have magical claws and teeths.
This feat is straight S, from lvl 1 to lvl 20. Needs a half feat? It is. Needs to tank more? There is no other feature so good at this function when you consider how quickly you can take it.
I don't even understand why people love tough so much. Of course, have more HP is really good and it's justified in an Dex build where heavy armor isn't a thing, but paladins and fighters in heavy armor taking tough instead of HAM? Blasphemy.
At level 8 (being generous with tough) you have 16 extra hit points. If you have HAM instead, you can mitigate this damage in approximately 5 attacks. Plot twist: Sometimes you not even suffer damage of minor attacks.
Once I played Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the campaign is full of combats, lots and lots of them, and the majority are deadly AF. I did started with polearm master to kill enemies quickly, but man, this campaign is mad, we fought three elite bandits (I don't know the real name, but they are something like CR 3 with 3 attacks per turn) and I haven't dead just cause I used dodge and shield of fate while wielding a shield.
After this encounter, at level four, I gave up with the sentinel and grab HAM. I've never reached so close of the death again.
So alchemist is a subclass artificer, it gets to add their intelligence mod to any spell that is acid, fire, or cold, AND they get to add DOUBLE their intelligence mod for healing spells. They cam also create potions that give temp hp and a random beneficial effect. And they can make a wand that has ten charges of any first or second level spell that anyone can use. So they can make a wand of healing word. The double intelligence mod is huge because your healing word now does 1d4+10 healing (if you have a 20int) . That's a bonus action at range. Because acid splash and firebolt are fire and acid spells you get to add your int to the damage
So you are consistently able to use your action for a decent damage centrip and your bonus action for healing.
Double INT mod? Where does it say this? I read this:
"At 5th level, you've developed masterful command of magical chemicals, enhancing the healing and damage you create through them. Whenever you cast a spell using your alchemist's supplies as the spellcasting focus, you gain a bonus to one roll of the spell. That roll must restore hit points or be a damage roll that deals acid, fire, necrotic, or poison damage, and **the bonus equals your Intelligence modifier** (minimum of +1)."
I’ve been playing a Rogue who recently multiclassed into Paladin for story reasons. “It’s one level of Paladin, how useful can it be? It’s an extra 10 hp and a 5 hp Lay on Hands pool. It’s practically a nerf to myself”
The very next encounter, I was left with 4 hp.
One session when I was low level with my friends the end of the dungeon there was a set of doors that were spewing darkness making it impossible to see the closer we got the darker it got in the room to even torchlight didn’t work. We knew there were doors just one turn away but there were also darkness monsters behind us and if we choose to focus there was a chance they could catch us. My gf was looking at her spell cards and says she used thaumaturgy to close the doors. The dm look baffled, looked at the spell, and said “the doors close and the room clears of darkness. You can all see clearly and are safe” completely missing the boss that was behind the source of the darkens
Another time we failed to contain a cult summoning a massive demon and the dm was excited because he planned that battle out and she used Command to make him go back through the portal. She just said “Return” and the demon crit failed
I'm playing a 3rd level fighter/wizard2 and I have found Conjure Bonfire to be absolutely fantastic in tight tunnels against mindless zombies... I conjure bonfire in front of them and the line of zombies all move through it and trigger the damage.
In a high level game I run, we were all surprised by champion fighter. The wizard can drop a nuke, yes, but the fighter can deal about 100 damage each round because she crits on 18, dual wields and can action surge, and she has passive regeneration of 9 per turn (I think its half fighter level, may be more).
I have a Dex TWF Champion.
I did the math once by simulating the rolls. TWF Champion has a higher average DPR at higher levels than GWF. GWF can hit a higher max though.
If you find ways to stack extra damage dice (Piercer, Hex, Hunters Mark, Flame Tongue, etc) it gets scary fast.
Also, I went with the Dex build because I can switch to a longbow and still get the benefit of most class features. Incredibly versatile subclass, in my opinion.
Well, not sure if that was sarcasm but usually people claim that dual wielding is less effective. With Dual Wielder feat, you can wield two 1d8 weapons and with champion fighter you have a lot of crits.
No, not sarcasm. I've just always heard it wasn't good, and I've seen lower level fighters struggle with two weapon fighting.
If it works, though, that's awesome! Just needs the right build.
Duel wielding is lower in damage output, as it's 1 extra attack that uses your bonus action, when you could instead be adding a flat +10 to every attack, and gaining an additional (though slightly weaker) attack for your bonus action instead
Well, not sure if that was sarcasm but usually people claim that dual wielding is less effective. With Dual Wielder feat, you can wield two 1d8 weapons and with champion fighter you have a lot of crits.
Not only that, but Two-Weapon Fighting + Dual Wielder was, before Thrown Weapon Fighting came out, the best (if not only) way for a martial to mix up melee and ranged attacks without ever losing ability to make opportunity attacks or using ones requiring a weapon like Parry.
It has always been heavily underrated on STR characters which have enough carry weight to transport a lot of throwable weapons allowing them to keep equally effective at 20 or 30 feet away as within 5 feet (opportunity attack potential aside). Meaning you can choose whether to risk melee or not each round.
I've made Sharpshooter Throwers far before Thrown Weapon Fighting was added to the game and it worked extremely well except for Fighter which ultimately get too many attacks per round to make Dual-Wielder follow. Also, it tended to lose efficiency at higher level because until Kensei Monk came out, you simply needed each thrown weapon to be magical and this means obviously a lot of gold to spend upfront even if you can pick them up after battle. xd
Now that you can have Returning Weapon from an ally Artificer (N)PC or get Thrown Weapon Fighting there is really no limit anymore. \^\^
Any Monk against any caster. People don't realise how boned that caster is until it gets grappled and then has to make 4 concentration checks and 4 stunning checks per round.
I made a Gunslinger wood elf work much better than my fellow PCs thought it would. Especially my mate who loves to Min max.
Took Elven Accuracy and took the trick shot that gives you advantage. Nasty crits thanks to triple advantage, for a one-shot at lvl 5 it worked really well. I think it drops off later on, though.
Tanky bladesinger wizard with more points dumped into DEX than INT. Having a DEX of 20 means my to hit is +10 with my magical rapier, and my AC is pretty high *before* activating bladesong. And on top of that, haste lets me attack several times, where bladesingers can use cantrips in multiattack. Overall:
- High DPS.
- Speed of over 100.
- Nigh impenetrable AC.
- High to hit bonus.
- Does magical damage that ignores most martial damage resistances.
- Can still cast fireball.
Nice! Bladesingers are often considered very good, but having a different build for it that still works is great.
and 1/2 damage on fireball is still awesome.
Oh yeah, and let's be real pretty much everything makes the save at high levels regardless. He's level 7 with an 18 DEX and a 16 INT so it's passable. DM wouldn't let me do extended point buy to get a 20 DEX... something about the store policy forcing him to use point arrays
Adventurers League? Yeah, that's how they roll. They also sometimes enforce the rule that you can't use more than 2 sourcebooks and the PHB in your build.
I like Command. I was reading something earlier today where a fight with a Devil of some kind was shut down when after it gated in, the cleric just cast command and said, "Return." It walked right back through the gate and that was that.
Cavalier Fighter, for some reason I always forget this subclass exists but my god is it actually a very decent class that FEELS like it’s a fighter subclass. A lot of the other can feel like “oooh magical flavour” whereas the cavalier just feels like a FIGHTER
>I often "ground and pound" enemies which is completely RAW, and often do some improvised stuff like cuffing them with manacles
Unironically a *fantastic* combat technique for fighters and even some rogues. Grapple, prone, manacles is a great way to end an encounter in a single round if you can pull it off (Action Surge and the Thief subclass' Fast Hands both help here).
"Grapplemancy" in general is a really underrated combat technique because it can be hard to close distance on an enemy, and some creatures in the Monster Manual can't even be grappled-- but if you can pull it off, it's well worthwhile.
A surpsingly effective combination for Eldrich Knights is using their 'War Magic' and casting 'Blade Ward'. As an Action then attacking once as a Bonus Action.
It's a non-resource way to boost your defences and still get an attack and from levels 7-10 it shouldn't be overlooked.
Yes there are better classes, better abilities... But it is one of the few which doesn't require resources to enact. Add in Heavy Armour Master to the mix and for as long as you need to... You can tank like a Barbarian, except you can also cast Blur on yourself for an extra 'screw you' as you hold the enemies at the door.
Oh, and you still get to attack once a round :)
Barb/Druid multi. The most common thing I see about is that it’s just a health sink which is true, but it means I can do some pretty dumb stuff and just shrug it off.
The only HP that matters is the last one, the harder it is for them to get me to it, the more nonsense I can do beforehand.
Wildshape by itself is pretty unbalanced at levels 1-5.
But it falls off at later levels. Not that it's bad but it just isn't great in-combat-numbers-wise, it just never is as gamebreaking as at the first few levels. Throwing Rage on top of it is just steroids.
I’m partial to EKs/ EK-Wizard Multis dropping two spells on a turn with Action Surge and Metamagic Adept for twinning.
Most enemies feel like chumps when you’re smashing them with the twinned chromatic orb twice. It’s a nova strat so I don’t see people flock to it, but I still dig it.
It sounds fun. I've been wanting to play a EK for a while, but ended up making a STR based ranger build instead. Decent Gish, actually.
What's your favorite thing you pulled off with your EK?
I used the Hold Person+Scorching Ray combo on my last EK-Wizard. The paralyzed crit effect comes into effect when you’re within 5 ft, so it Dm doesn’t matter if you’re throwing a ranger attack.
Felt great to finish a champion with the “Stand proud, you’re strong” type hit.
I played a chronurgy harengon, and the most powerful spell I ever cast was levitate.
No save after the first, and then the BBEG was just stuck floating in mid-air, for the whole fight, and had no way to reach me to make me break concentration, thanks to a wall that I could duck behind.
For a game that ran at levels 8-14 I ran a Swashbuckler Rogue 5/Swords Bard 9 multiclass. Cunning action, jack of all trades, extra attack, sneak attack, spellcasting... and my favorite part, +11 to initiative rolls.
I dunno how powerful it was, but it was a lot of fun to play. I'm looking forward to our level 15-20 sequel when I can add magical secrets into the mix.
Phantom rouge. It is very good at dealing damage to multiple people every attack with its wails from the grave and at higher levels is able to deal and additionally 5d6ish damage to the target you just hit with sneak attack. So around 13d6 damage to 1 target. Actually able to take some decent hits since they are 1 of 2 ways to modify your death saving throws.
Your soul coins can do A lot to help with both combat and RP situations and you can get them back from being used after a creature of any sort dies within 30ft of you. So almost limitless uses with how much damage you can do
I'm about to start Light of Xaryxis this Saturday.
A player has made a Brougebarian. Level 1 Barbarian and level 4 Rogue. He's gomma be raging from stealth lol I can see it.
Using battlerager as a non-magic disabler. RAW, you can use the shove action to knock someone prone, then grapple them so they can’t move. Instant advantage to any of your melee friends. Also disadvantage on dex saves. Alternatively, you could use their ability to restrain both you and the one you’re grappling. That may not sound great on paper, but if your table uses the “using creatures as cover” rules, it’s actually really viable.
The only thing I dislike about Gloomstalker is that it makes every other ranger subclass pointless. There's no good reason to take any other subclass unless your DM homebrews some additional features to bring them up to par with it. I've seen far too many Bugbear Gloomstalkers/Fighter combos who rely on Dread Ambusher, Surprise Attack, Action Surge and Sharpahooter to end encounters on their first round or so.
Highly depends on the campaign and master but something simple like darkness trivializes most combats.
It's not very frequent that enemies can see in the *magic* dark or run to a safe location. (Ofc DM may give them the ex machina to perfectly run to a safe location outside your dark dome.
Telepathy is also a great way to madden a target. Someone speaking/screaming in your mind while you try to concentrate, have a normal conversation or even rest, is powerful.
I made a horizon walker ranger for a one-shot. I gave him great weapon master and heavy armor proficiency.
He could hit once, teleport behind to hit somebody else a couple times, then teleport to tanking position.
He wasn't the best, I could have optimized him better with other feats or multi classing, but he was fun.
NY brother once killed our DM's BBEG in session for by grappling him, ***KISSING*** him so he couldn't speak, and then just crushing him to death in a lover's embrace a la Ainz Ooal Gown
I had a character who took the Sharpshooter feat and the Gunner feat. The result is a character who uses mostly nets without disadvantage. This character borderline broke Curse of Strahd.
A sun-soul monk with spell sniper gets a free cantrip and also doubles the range of their unarmed strikes to 60 feet, creating the ultimate skirmish class for a medium+ sized party
Grease. If your DM is remotely cool, you’re largely limited by your imagination.
I think a lot of low level magic has so much room for imagination that higher spells often lose for the sake of raw power - but I’m one to pick almost exclusively spells that would be on-flavor for my characters, so I use a lot of garbage magic.
Sleet Storm often is bagged on in guides and tier lists. Yet everytime I use when things are seeming hairy i shut down multiple monsters allowing the party to deal with fewer enemies.
My player used Cutting Words to reduce aoe spell damage. Everyone else were using that ability just to make attacks miss, so I did not even remember, that reducing dmg is allowed.
I've had arguments with people and proved to them with math that my ranger could outdamage they're whatever else, but has utility, too.
Was pretty fun.
Nothing can save a party drom a tpk like healing multiple downed characters with an Aid in lower levels. What do you mean have to choose who to heal????
It's a class feature of Champion Fighters. At level 7 they get 1/2 proficiency in any Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity checks they are otherwise not proficient in.
This doesn't include Saving Throws, but it does include Initiative checks.
Thanks! I'm running my second Curse of Strahd campaign right now, have been playing D&D since before I could read, but it seems there's always more to know! And of course my memory isn't quite the steel trap it once was!
Artificer Infusions let you replicate an uncommon magic item instead of the default ones listed. It specifies you can't make scrolls or potions, but nothing says you can't make spellwrought tattoos. This means you can basically cast any Level 1 spell from any class once per long rest without requiring any material components, and if the spell has a duration, the tattoo doesn't vanish until the spell ends.
This lets you do some fun stuff. You can give your entire party a Familiar each (reminder that anyone can cast Touch-ranged spells like Cure Wounds or Inflict Wounds through their familiar, and Owls have the flyby feature), or cast Zephyr Strike once per day with your Armorer Artificer, or Ceremony, Bless, Hex, Gift of Alacrity, Shield, Silvery Barbs, etc.
I think Fathomless Warlock would make for a great control warlock. Tentacle of the Deep gives you a good use of a bonus action for added damage + speed reduction and later damage reduction. Grasping Tentacles gives to a free casting of a souped up Evards. The expanded spell list gives you great control and blasting spells like Bigby hand, Lightning Bolt, and Cone of Cold. Pair it with invocations like Repelling Blast, Lance of Lethargy, or the one that pulls enemies and you can put foes wherever you need them. It sounds like a lot of fun on paper.
I lived that dream. Get an item of spider climbing, take repelling blast, and get Spell Sniper. You'll be knocking enemies out of cover while hiding behind the chandelier.
Can confirm. My DM naively gave my Warlock Slippers of Spider Climb. Combined with Far Step, it's absolutely ridiculous.
Far Step is so effing cltuch. Our DM was using a random shop roller. It spat out the Cloak of Arachnidae. It cost all my gold, but I was never happier. I reskinned it to be a 'cloak of octopoda', though. Having the Actor Feat and Mask of Many Faces is never more fun when you can look at the ceiling of a room three stories up through the window, teleport it like Nightcrawler, stick to the ceiling like Spiderman, and change your appearance like Mystique as you slink your way in.
...Can I join your game? LOL
I'm flattered! As long as I have you, though I will warn [there is a downside](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/vxk3xt/my_powers_are_peak_when_we_split_the_party_awesome/#lightbox) to this build.
Ah yes, the problem of all stealth experts… the paladin in plate.
What's the downside? 0\_0
Check the post, the pop-up probably didn't tell you I seeded a link there.
It was exactly the same color. LOL Nice meme.
I somehow imagine "slippers of spider climb" as looking like my grandpa's slippers he put on every morning fresh out of bed...but then he takes the long way across the ceiling to get the paper.
I always imagine bunny slippers
Have you considered how the attracting blast works if you are on the ceiling above them? Not a common situation, and not one all DM's would allow, just ragdolling the enemy up into the air and getting a free 10ft drop.
You know, I want you in my character-creation think-tank; that occurred to me and I adore the idea. But at the end of the day I had agendas with my invocations, and a once a round 'tug' wasn't even making the top ten. My DM was kind enough to toss on a D6 if I Repelled someone into a worthy surface, and that shit happens every hit.
That does sound fun! I'd love to see that in action.
Grasp of Hadar IIRC
summon shadowspawn has a 20 ft. speed reduction aura (no save). Its amazing for a fathomless
My next character will be this. He’ll be an Aasimar, which has some really fun synergy
Can confirm, played an Eladrin Sorlock 6/10 white draconic sorcerer and fathomless warlock. Played up the whole frost thing with sleet storm, cone of cold, repelling blast, Lance of lethargy, tentacles for days... It was so much fun. My very first attack roll (came in at level 4/7) was an elven accuracy - familiar helping - inflict wounds at a 4th level spell slot that crit and 1 shot killed a Mind Flayer. 12d10 damage and I rolled well.
Sorcerers; especially the aberrant mind and clockwork soul are stupid powerful. I feel like they don’t get the same love as the wizards and the bards but if you use the metamagic right they solve all the problems.
One thing I love about sorcerers is that just having Subtle Spell and any teleport spell makes you impossible to contain as long as you’re conscious. Doesn’t come up often, but it’s fun.
I am a Vortex Warp addict and I am not ashamed.
Vortex Warp is so fun with Twin, Distant, and upcasting.
Vortex Warp is an extremely fun spell, even if it doesn’t work on yourself. My party’s Paladin and I have been doing a combo against flyers where he readies a grapple and then I vortex warp him above them
Subtle Spell is my single favorite mechanic in 5e. Sure, you can do things like cast Phantasmal Force on the shitbag prince at that fancy dinner you were invited to. Did he pass the first save? Just do it again! As far as everyone else is concerned he just went mad paranoid, seeing a ghostly face laughing at him above the table. And it couldn't have been you, you were clearly stuffing your face at the time. But more importantly you can super petty. One time one of the party tried to high five a guard so I subtle'd a suggestion that he should hit him back. The guard was confused why he did that but it's not like I cast a spell or anything :)
One thing I like about sorcerers as long as you have sorcerer points and spell slots you can be highly effective in any situation.
"Having access to my class abilities makes me useful" is probably one of the mildest takes ever LMAO.
The player still has to be smart and resourceful. I barely used any of my resources while going through a dungeon unless it was absolutely necessary. Then the rest of the table wondered why I was so powerful at the end of the adventuring day; because I saved all my firepower
There's no way a slightly-above-average-archer-damaging, samey-EB+AB-turns Sorlock is touching an Aberrant Mind in tier 2. Mostly I'm talking about fun turns of breaking the action economy with great spells. But secondarily, they aren't touching sorcs for power either. We don't need tanks, we don't need heals, we don't need buffs. We got a sorc. This dude's over here spamming Twin Dissonant Whispers so we're all smiting/sneak attacking/stunning off turns and we've hardly been touched. Are they going to open with Twin mind sliver + upcast Banishment? Slow? Summon Aberration? Evards? Confusion? Next rounds are twinned/upcast Mind Slivers, Commands, Dissonant Whispers, Tasha's Mind Whips, Psychic Lances, and Synaptic Statics. Incoming damage defeated. Oh dang. Sorry bard, AM just mind controlled that guy with componentless Suggestion, so you don't need to persuade them. You charmed that other guy? In this crowded room, without Subtle? Oh, AM sees his thoughts, and now we know where to scry on them tomorrow, so we don't need to go check out their place anymore. But let's do it anyway. We got componentess Hex for our sneaking and persuading/deceiving. I failed a skill check? Inspiration? Naw, let me reroll it real quick first. Naw, I haven't used any slots yet today, but I'm getting low on sorc points now and might need to eat a middle slot or two. shit, they saw us (or more likely "you shouldn't have told *them* about *that*"). Let me erase their memory? Oh, you got that now too? I'll erase their friends' memory of you casting that with obvious components just now. And I can comfortably cast that 5th level Modify Memory 6 or 7 more times if this is all we're doing today. Yeah, that was with Heightened factored in.
I will never stop shilling sorcerers.
I think they get a bad rap because both wild magic and draconic sorcerer are very...bland, as is storm sorcerer, so when your first 3 subclasses that are released for you are somewhat boring (wild magic as printed is pretty mid because it relies on the DM to proc your abilities) and the 4th subclass just makes your primary issue even worse, the fact that you have 15 total spells and now you have to choose 15 spells from two spell lists, it can paint the whole class in a bad light, aberrant mind and clockwork are both good, but they're good because they give the sorcerer an expanded spell list more than anything else I've found.
I played an evil sorceress (the kind of evil that is meant to fit into a good party) for one campaign and we had good Paladin in the party. It was a very very very handy combination. We could get all the NPCs motives and moral compasses worked out pretty quickly and get creative in our problem solving.
Thief rogues. They may not be the best rogues but I'll never forget bumrushing the bbegs main wizard henchmen, ripping his necklace of fireballs off, immediately detonating it blowing him up and taking no damage because you know I'm a rogue.
At 13 thief rogues arguably become the best scroll users in the game, able to use scrolls from any caster's list. Get arcana proficiency from your background and take expertise in it and boom, you're almost never failing a scroll check. If you have friends willing to make scrolls for you, you can basically act as a full caster and rogue simultaneously.
Scrolls don't use arcana. They use your Spellcasting Ability modifier
Oh you're right, I got that mixed up with copying spells into spell books
Thief Rogue in my party. We had to plant a bug into the throne room of some royalty. We sent him in alone to plant it, never rolled below a 20. Turned what our DM intended to be a difficult challenge DESIGNED to fuck us over a little, into a literal cake walk.
People online seem to think Fighter isn't a good class but across 3700+ hours of 5e D&D online and several in person games I don't have exact hours on, I've found that the fighter is an incredible class. The fighter in the party is The Badass, when everyone else is down or rendered useless, the fighter solos bosses that would TPK the rest of the party if the invincible badass fighter wasn't there to deal 100+ damage a turn.
100% everyone seems to cry that fighters and martials in general cant keep up with casters but every power build is some kind of gish. Most of the time they use some silly PVP scenario to justify why fighters are bad. That has bothing to do with how the game is actually played and designed
I think most of the issue there isn’t with combat. Martials and casters are both competent in combat. Martials tend to be better at directly doing damage, while casters are usually better at control and buffing. A combo of both will do better than any one individually. Out of combat though, casters are faaaaar better than martials. Casters can have everyone communicating telepathically while shifting planes and summoning invisible allies to scout ahead, while martials can at best like, get people to like them more.
My fighter has solved lots of problems with a good bit of intimidation.... It's surprising what you can solve with a good, implied threat. And if your DM doesn't let you use your skills with alternative attributes, like Strength(Intimidation) because you just took a metal shield and casually folded it in half with strong eye contact, then you're really missing out. Also...the only character whoever shifted us through the planes was my fighter because he was f****** about with an artifact he found. We had a lot of fun getting back. And this is the part where I say magic items and artifacts really change the game And bridge the gap in utility between Martials and casters.
Yes, but a charisma caster can intimidate just as well, except they can supplement it with spells like enhance ability or charm person. And if your DM has to go out of their way to give martials more or better magic items just to bridge that gap, that only proves how much more powerful casters are.
But the thing is casters can do that too. But they also have their toolbox. Casters have a bunch of spells for specific scenarios. prestigi… stuff. Mage hand, message, guidance, mending, shape water and thaumaturgy. And that’s just csntrips that have nice rp features.
Every power build you have seen is some sort of gish either a) those are extremely popular and/or b) Paladin 6 is really important so building around making all of Paladins major weaknesses (slow slot progression, forced into str melee for their good damage etc) are problems worth figuring out (whether that's with Hexblade, Sorcerer, both or even Bard). In general fighter is seen as the best pure dpr class (using cbe+ss) if you ignore conjure animals, skeleton shenanigans etc, which obviously have problems of their own (especially with resistance to nonmagical bps and it is a lot cheaper to equip one fighter than to get like 8 moon-touched shortbows). The class just sadly doesn't offer much more in the way of utility and damage is seen as a less important thing considering everything else you can do in 5e (like Peace Wizard).
Right??? My damage is never peak with my build, but when the caster creates a hazard and I just hold a monster in it while pounding on it the damage is extreme....
Wild that anyone is including the most often power gamed classes here. "Sorcerer and warlock are overlooked." In what world? Here's a hot take. Monk and ranger are always effective choices and are often quite strong. Wizards are the most often garbage characters I see in games.
Wizard's have a problem of always having the wrong solution ready, and they can't take hits if they aren't built for it. Skill ceiling is much higher, but there's no floor... I played a Wizard for years, and it was fun. I constantly had to deal with the DM nerfing my spells and decision paralysis on my turn. I'm never playing another.
Ah, analysis paralysis. When playing a wizard, and you can't decide on what to do, just remember this old adage "when in doubt, blast it out."
i’m pretty sure the reason why everyone dislikes ranger is not because of damage but how poorly design it is
mhmm... alternatively, it's not that poor of design. Original ranger is specialized, making it slightly less versatile for sandbox buffets, but amazing for a majority of modules. Tasha's ranger caters to the need for more flexible rangers. There's nothing overtly poor about it and that shows in gameplay.
Yeah, some aspects of it are bad...and yet you can just set those aside and it's still good. I totally understand hating on \*looks it up\* "Primevel Awareness." Man...how do you even use that and why does it cost a spell slot? But, if you just forget it exists you still have a really good class.
People always say the Monk is weak but in any campaign I've been in where there is a Monk they end up being MVP of combat more than anyone else. And with the Tasha's rules you can make an extremely effective WIS focused Ranger.
I have a DM who still shudders when anyone asks about the lighting situation. It brings them back to my Shadow Monk for years back
Most people are pretty chill about letting others do what they want. That being said, I've only had people give me crap for playing a single class Warlock. I've played Ranger and had people fuss because I wasn't a Gloomstalker, but it was nothing compared to the amount of times I've had total strangers try to educate me about Warlocks only being viable as a dip class.
Those people do not understand the POWER OF THE NAP! Seriously, though, I can't tell you how many of my DMs encounters I fucked up with my warlock because he was expecting Pew Pew, and he got the Nova instead. Then he's like, "At least it's over..." But I took a nap.
Right?? I was in a game where we (4 characters at level 5) came across a military fort that was suffering from a disease outbreak that also lead to zero food supplies. I asked the DM if he had any short rest requirements. He didn't. I was playing a Celestial Warlock with Lesser Restoration. Druid, Fighter, and Rogue set up a pretty decent camp nearby while I cured two people and napped every hour. We moved the healthy people to the camp. Then the druid essentially power washed the whole fort and we moved them back in. It was supposed to be this whole quest chain with rare medical ingredients, risk of getting sick, and weeks of labor. We were out of there before the week was out. Everyone was well fed, healthy, and knew what to do to avoid getting sick again. It was pretty great.
DM over there going, "I forgot to plan around their base features again... FUCK!" I always find that hillarious, but that's when you just roll and introduce a new wrinkle or a new hook to a place that's more complicated.
I locked two PCs in a room with a deadly poisonous trap. A level 10 Monk and a Wizard with a Periapt of Proof Against Poison. Womp womp. In the same dungeon, I thought I had them because they had taken a Radiant Idol prisoner and couldn't use any type of flight. I made an entire water puzzle based room. Monk just carried everyone across the surface of the water at a brisk jog.
Warlocks are powerhouses through tier 2 (and they don't really slouch much after that either). Warlock 11 is one of the better power bumps in the game (it's bc of the extra slot. The extra ray of EB is just nice to have by comparison). There are two problems: lack of imagination and short rests. The first problem is solvable by recognizing that warlocks should be casting more level-appropriate spells per day than most other full casters. They can do more than spam slightly above average archer damage. But so many are spending their slots to just buff that archer damage a bit. The second problem can be solved by any level headed DM. Short rests are part of the class's design, and a couple should be available most days. Some days it won't be reasonable to short rest much, but those should be the exceptions, not the norm.
>it was nothing compared to the amount of times I've had total strangers try to educate me about *Warlocks only being viable as a dip class.* Which just prove they don't get anything about Warlocks, and probably not many about the game in general. xd
Genie warlock with pact of chain is tons of fun. At level 10 the entire party can come with you into your genie vessel and chill while an invisible flying imp familiar carries the vessel anywhere you wanna go.
That's honestly hilarious.
Have you seen the JoJo episodes with the turtle with a Stand? reminds me of that.
Muffling a caster to prevent them from using verbal components isn't just at the extreme end of the grapple rules, it isn't directly available at all in the rules themselves. When we get to the nebulous area of "DM may I?" like this, it becomes incredibly easy for different tables to have different opinions on different builds, because they're effectively playing different games. (I'll add that at any table where muffling with a grapple is permitted, if the players initially found it cool, the casters of the party will almost certainly change their mind if the enemies start employing the same tricks.)
"DM may I?" is a valid approach for actions that are cartoonish, unrealistic, or undefined. This is the case of an extremely standard, real-world kind of action. A big beefy guy putting his hands over someone's mouth is straightforward. It's the DM's obligation to come up with a reasonable dice roll to represent the action, not to say "that's simply not a thing that can be done." Verbal spell components are an explicit and intentional weakness for spellcasters.
It's a valid approach, yes, but it also makes the premise of this post moot. "This build is much more effective than people think it is" is obviously going to be true if you're playing by a different set of rules than everyone else. And while it may be realistic for a grappler to successfully muffle a caster, balance-wise, it's a considerable problem, as the grappler shuts down the caster with little to no possible counterplay. (Even in cases where the caster has *hold person*, a rather extreme PvP spell, a reasonably built grappler is usually considerably more likely to shut down the caster and keep them locked down to be unable to attempt *hold person* than they are to fail twice in a row against *hold person*, and the caster can run out of *hold person* while the grappler cannot run out of grapple attempts.)
Metamagic subtle spell, that's your only counterplay, beyond just using a spell that lacks a verbal component
Extreme? Id say its the basic application of the rules. Casting spells that explicitly require hand signs or verbal components is impossible if your ability to do either is taken.
"Extreme" isn't my wording, it's the OP's. There are no defined rules for muffling a creature physically (and even in the case of manacles, "bind" is never properly defined for how it interacts with any other mechanics), so we are entirely in the space of what the DM decides for their tables, which makes any discussion of, "Wow, this build is really slept-on in the community," moot.
>I often "ground and pound" enemies which is completely RAW Are we still doing phrasing?
We are now...😏
> putting a hand on the mouth of a grappled caster so he can't speak. I've had so many discussions whether this should be a legal action or not.
It's an improvised action, so it's totally up to the DM. But RAW, you can make the attempt as an improvised action. DM get's to decide how that plays out, like maybe in his version of the rules a mumble is enough to cast... Or maybe it's only sort of effective and the mage has to make a check to cast? Or maybe he just says no.
It's good game design to give the martials more interesting things to do. Plus it will showcase my ridiculous Aberrant Mind powers. *"You hear "Really?" in your brain, seemingly from nowhere, while the Aberrant Mind looks a little bored but also slightly annoyed that you stuck a gag in their mouth. Roll a DC 18 Wis save. No, you have disadvantage. You didn't see a spell being cast, but you just said "Sorry" and you let them go. Now you seem to be straightening out their shirt and are wiping off the smudge you left on their face"*
Heavy Armor Master is one of the most slept on Feats in the game. Over the course of normal campaigns it prevents hundreds of damage, ones that go on for more than a few levels creeps into the thousands of damage prevented.
Non-magic is a big reason why it's not taken as much
But the majority of damage not from players is still non magic. Even Tiamat has attacks that do non-magical damage.
Oh I agree. By the math it's a fine feat. But most people just assume everything does magical damage at lv 5 and write of off
Yeah, my fighter has it! It's been great, because he has less CON than he should for RP reasons.
Maximize by going all-in on a Bear Barbarian (which "resistance to all damage when you Rage" supercedes the standard "get benefits while raging as long as not wearing heavy armor). Or just someone with Warding Bond. \^\^ Even at higher level as long as you have resistance it's still worth. And even when it becomes insufficient to make any difference over a day, it still carried the character all the way up to that point. :)
We have a spores Druid in the party I DM for and it’s really an awesome subclass. I feel like I hardly ever see it mentioned online.
I've heard good things about the spores druid, but I think Druid's in general are just less popular because of the roleplay aspects. Meanwhile they're just over there being a chill nature wizard.
Spores druid is one of my favourite classes flavor-wise, mechanically I made a few timy homebrew tweaks to get that feel there. Didn't play the character yet, but am looking forward to it.
Every spore Druid player I’ve met has felt that it’s a melee-oriented class that doesn’t work well as one, and so I told my wife that if she ever wanted to play one I’d homebrew Shillelagh to scale like every other cantrip so melee was more viable.
That's not bad tbh, the homebrew I took inspiration from relied of Primal Savagery instead and a homebrew cantrip "Enfeebling Hand". Alongside the other tweaks it really leans into the melee playstile as a spore druid should. Still not a full front liner but it does the job it was intended to do.
what tweaks did you make?
Take a look at the improvenents made by Bone Wizard on youtube. He has takes on many subclasses and ways to make them better in some ways.I think what he did is pretty good, love the mechanics. Then I added some of my own stuff alongside it, or rather tweaked stuff, more for flavor than pure mechanics. I'm blessed with a DM that loves to homebrew himself and when his players homebrew, as long as it's not broken and makes sense, but other DMs will need a talk before letting this play. Alongside that there's a homebrew spell "Volatile Reanimation" that really works well alongside the character, I found it on the UnearthedArcana subreddit I think.
I did a Spores Druid/Swarmkeeper Ranger, Tortle. He held a shield made of bones and was flavored as a plaguebearing hermit who specialized in melee, using his spores and swarm to control the battlefield. He rekt.
Wildfire is one of the better controllers in the game. Top control caster in a game where control is a nuclear weapon.
Hunter Ranger, after seeing one in play i can tell you that 95% of people that discuss dnd cant comprehend that having a bad feature like Favorite terrain doesnt make the class bad. It makes that feature not good. Hunters mark and steelwind strike are phenomenal spells in combat and especially hunters mark is such a low reasourse cost for the damage you get from it. They add extra damage once a turn, and they get THE strongest AOE attack for martials at 11. Hunters have always been playable and just fine even before tashas and especially now even if gloomstalker is definitely stronger
>Hunters mark and steelwind strike are phenomenal spells Hunter's Mark is not a phenomenal spell. In fact, it's a trap once you hit level 5-7 or so. Steel Wind Strike is good, but the problem is a ranger can't have it until tier 4, which almost nobody gets to play. (Meanwhile, a wizard gets it at level 9, which lots of people get to play, and a gish can use the spell just as effectively as a ranger but 8 levels earlier and more times per day.)
I meant zephyr oops yeah i wouldnt use tuer 3 as an arguement for power
Zephyr Strike _is_ a great spell, I agree. And actually usable by almost every ranger, unlike SWS.
Also i disagree about hunters mark being a trap, i think its just as potent to use a long bow and hunters mark and use the ASI to max your stats or take another potant feat as it is to take Xbow expert and use a hand crossbow
I played in a game with a Hunter Ranger for 3 years. He consistently put down lots of damage every turn. I've always been amazed at how people crap on the Ranger class over and over again when it has things like the ability to do an extra 1d8 of damage against any enemy not at full health, a fighting style, and spells... I mean, there's definitely a divide between martials and casters, but people called the Ranger the worst class in D&D for years, and it's just not....Now they've switched to being down on the Monk.
To be fair, monks are mechanically the weakest in combat unless you take excessive sirt rests but even then other classes benefit from short reat spamming more
Monks have always been in a bit of a blind spot for the developers, but I've never met a monk player that cared. They just keep kicking people with a smile on their faces.
Yes being mechanically the weakest doesnt stop them from being fun or versatile
While monks don't per se have the highest numbers. They have more fun per turn than most other martials.
I love rangers! I don't care if they're unbalanced, or not as powerful. **I want to be like Aragorn**, dammit, and nobody can stop me!
Agreed. My last build was based around that idea. LOVED IT.
>but people called the Ranger the worst class in D&D for years, and it's just not....Now they've switched to being down on the Monk. And equally wrong in their evaluation of it as they were with the Rangers. But hey, actual rationale is not the forte of theorycrafters considering they conveniently put aside somewhere around 90% of every factor one should consider to make a proper evaluation (and since it would be a huge pain to work out, nobody does it xd).
Ranger never was weak, I think he's even stronger than fighters cause spellcasting, however they don't do what they are supposed to do: explore XD
Damage solves. Nearly every fight is won by making the enemies have zero hp. Fighters are very good at this.
They are very consistent at it. Other classes do a bit more here and a bit less there. Fighter's just keep on 'bonkin... And grapplin...
Once sharpshooter is in the mix, I'd be hard pressed to find a character that has more impact over the course of a campaign than a fighter. Casters are amazing and have turns that swing fights. Fighters do work every round. Cool, hypnotic pattern is up on 3/5 dudes. We still have to kill them all, right?
Oh yeah fighter is one of the best cleaners in the game and it is among the best users of strong buffs in the game like Peace Clerics (or God Wizards) double bless or part of a twinned haste. They are also the only full martial that can really choose when they want to go full nova with action surge, instead of being forced into relatively similar turn by turn output like Barbarian/Rogue (or Monk who has to spend ressources to not fall behind). The only thing that can really get more dpr without heavy ressource use (like smiting every turn) is minion spam (and even that uses higher level spells with long durations).
Rangers are good, at least with the alternate abilities in Tasha's book. I tried a Ranger in a lvl 5 one-shot once and thought "damn, this is stronger than a fighter"
The internet loves to shit on Monks all day long. My Shadow Monk slaps. I also get to do cool shit all the time. Jump off of buildings, wall run, dance across water, return projectiles to sender, stun multiple targets in a round, resource free teleportation etc etc etc.
For real, the Shadow Monk is wild. Probably my favorite character in my roster. My DM was kind enough to let mine train in blind fighting during downtime as well, so now he can hit 'em with Darkness and go to town.
Well, I cheated just a smidgen. I took 3 levels of Gloomstalker as well. This old girl has all kinds of tricks up her sleeve.
Yeah, it's almost like having the highest numbers isn't really what D&D is about. You can be a very effective and fun class by being adaptable and versatile to different situations as long as you as a player know how to do that effectively. And that's kind of the Monk's whole thing.
I tend to like spells that are not used that much. I used Erupting earth on a floor that had a hole due to a previous battle and caused it to collapse under an enemy (my character was in a one on one battle, and the opponent said that if I impressed him, he would hear my character's plea, and so he did in the end, even if my character got defeated, since he was a sorcerer and the lack of space was a disadvantage). Also, many teleportation spells are broken if you prepare the spell on the previous turn to react to an enemy attack. With that, Vortex Warp and Scatter are amazing to nullify attacks against the party (You can't concentrate on another spell, especially haste, if you do that, as preparing a spell requires your concentration) Another thing that I found out, this one with two casters, using spells that have in their text that they can freeze water as a spell prepared to cast (like Otiluke's freezing sphere) and tidal wave, freedom of the waves or tsunami, you can encase enemies in ice as the water freezes around them
I personally find good old boring human race very underrated. By far it was the easiest thing for me to role play and it gave me so many options on building my character around the campaign as the campaign developed which was natural in their character development arc. Like yeah sure their stats are a bit lower and they only know common language but who cares, they don’t have the restrictions that other races get. Humans are pretty open to anything and any direction.
It's not a build/spell or class, but I never see it in posts about broken feats or in classical internet combos ctrl C ctrl V like hexblade: Heavy Armor Master. When I started to play I always think bad about this feat. Like, plus 1 to strength is definitely good but -3 in non-magical attacks? It's would be useless after 7th level where every enemy will have magical weapons... Spoiler: Ancient Dragons don't have magical claws and teeths. This feat is straight S, from lvl 1 to lvl 20. Needs a half feat? It is. Needs to tank more? There is no other feature so good at this function when you consider how quickly you can take it. I don't even understand why people love tough so much. Of course, have more HP is really good and it's justified in an Dex build where heavy armor isn't a thing, but paladins and fighters in heavy armor taking tough instead of HAM? Blasphemy. At level 8 (being generous with tough) you have 16 extra hit points. If you have HAM instead, you can mitigate this damage in approximately 5 attacks. Plot twist: Sometimes you not even suffer damage of minor attacks. Once I played Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the campaign is full of combats, lots and lots of them, and the majority are deadly AF. I did started with polearm master to kill enemies quickly, but man, this campaign is mad, we fought three elite bandits (I don't know the real name, but they are something like CR 3 with 3 attacks per turn) and I haven't dead just cause I used dodge and shield of fate while wielding a shield. After this encounter, at level four, I gave up with the sentinel and grab HAM. I've never reached so close of the death again.
My fighter has Heavy Armor Master. even vampire's bite isn't magical, except for the additional necrotic damage. It's been a blast.
Alchemist are amazing healers
Haven't played that one. Tell me about it.
They get healing word
Fair.
They also get an ability that lets them add their intelligence to healing spells a second time
So alchemist is a subclass artificer, it gets to add their intelligence mod to any spell that is acid, fire, or cold, AND they get to add DOUBLE their intelligence mod for healing spells. They cam also create potions that give temp hp and a random beneficial effect. And they can make a wand that has ten charges of any first or second level spell that anyone can use. So they can make a wand of healing word. The double intelligence mod is huge because your healing word now does 1d4+10 healing (if you have a 20int) . That's a bonus action at range. Because acid splash and firebolt are fire and acid spells you get to add your int to the damage So you are consistently able to use your action for a decent damage centrip and your bonus action for healing.
Sorry to break this to you, but Spell-storing Item only works on '1 Action' spells, meaning Healing Word isn't an available option.
Double INT mod? Where does it say this? I read this: "At 5th level, you've developed masterful command of magical chemicals, enhancing the healing and damage you create through them. Whenever you cast a spell using your alchemist's supplies as the spellcasting focus, you gain a bonus to one roll of the spell. That roll must restore hit points or be a damage roll that deals acid, fire, necrotic, or poison damage, and **the bonus equals your Intelligence modifier** (minimum of +1)."
I’ve been playing a Rogue who recently multiclassed into Paladin for story reasons. “It’s one level of Paladin, how useful can it be? It’s an extra 10 hp and a 5 hp Lay on Hands pool. It’s practically a nerf to myself” The very next encounter, I was left with 4 hp.
Thaumaturgy. It can do way more than just make noise
Do tell! :-)
One session when I was low level with my friends the end of the dungeon there was a set of doors that were spewing darkness making it impossible to see the closer we got the darker it got in the room to even torchlight didn’t work. We knew there were doors just one turn away but there were also darkness monsters behind us and if we choose to focus there was a chance they could catch us. My gf was looking at her spell cards and says she used thaumaturgy to close the doors. The dm look baffled, looked at the spell, and said “the doors close and the room clears of darkness. You can all see clearly and are safe” completely missing the boss that was behind the source of the darkens
Hahaha! I love it. Next: Arcane Lock.
Another time we failed to contain a cult summoning a massive demon and the dm was excited because he planned that battle out and she used Command to make him go back through the portal. She just said “Return” and the demon crit failed
Command is always slept on. It's a great spell.
I'm playing a 3rd level fighter/wizard2 and I have found Conjure Bonfire to be absolutely fantastic in tight tunnels against mindless zombies... I conjure bonfire in front of them and the line of zombies all move through it and trigger the damage. In a high level game I run, we were all surprised by champion fighter. The wizard can drop a nuke, yes, but the fighter can deal about 100 damage each round because she crits on 18, dual wields and can action surge, and she has passive regeneration of 9 per turn (I think its half fighter level, may be more).
Dual wield at high level is decent? Surprising....
I have a Dex TWF Champion. I did the math once by simulating the rolls. TWF Champion has a higher average DPR at higher levels than GWF. GWF can hit a higher max though. If you find ways to stack extra damage dice (Piercer, Hex, Hunters Mark, Flame Tongue, etc) it gets scary fast. Also, I went with the Dex build because I can switch to a longbow and still get the benefit of most class features. Incredibly versatile subclass, in my opinion.
Well, not sure if that was sarcasm but usually people claim that dual wielding is less effective. With Dual Wielder feat, you can wield two 1d8 weapons and with champion fighter you have a lot of crits.
No, not sarcasm. I've just always heard it wasn't good, and I've seen lower level fighters struggle with two weapon fighting. If it works, though, that's awesome! Just needs the right build.
Duel wielding is lower in damage output, as it's 1 extra attack that uses your bonus action, when you could instead be adding a flat +10 to every attack, and gaining an additional (though slightly weaker) attack for your bonus action instead
Well, not sure if that was sarcasm but usually people claim that dual wielding is less effective. With Dual Wielder feat, you can wield two 1d8 weapons and with champion fighter you have a lot of crits. Not only that, but Two-Weapon Fighting + Dual Wielder was, before Thrown Weapon Fighting came out, the best (if not only) way for a martial to mix up melee and ranged attacks without ever losing ability to make opportunity attacks or using ones requiring a weapon like Parry. It has always been heavily underrated on STR characters which have enough carry weight to transport a lot of throwable weapons allowing them to keep equally effective at 20 or 30 feet away as within 5 feet (opportunity attack potential aside). Meaning you can choose whether to risk melee or not each round. I've made Sharpshooter Throwers far before Thrown Weapon Fighting was added to the game and it worked extremely well except for Fighter which ultimately get too many attacks per round to make Dual-Wielder follow. Also, it tended to lose efficiency at higher level because until Kensei Monk came out, you simply needed each thrown weapon to be magical and this means obviously a lot of gold to spend upfront even if you can pick them up after battle. xd Now that you can have Returning Weapon from an ally Artificer (N)PC or get Thrown Weapon Fighting there is really no limit anymore. \^\^
Any Monk against any caster. People don't realise how boned that caster is until it gets grappled and then has to make 4 concentration checks and 4 stunning checks per round.
I made a Gunslinger wood elf work much better than my fellow PCs thought it would. Especially my mate who loves to Min max. Took Elven Accuracy and took the trick shot that gives you advantage. Nasty crits thanks to triple advantage, for a one-shot at lvl 5 it worked really well. I think it drops off later on, though.
Tanky bladesinger wizard with more points dumped into DEX than INT. Having a DEX of 20 means my to hit is +10 with my magical rapier, and my AC is pretty high *before* activating bladesong. And on top of that, haste lets me attack several times, where bladesingers can use cantrips in multiattack. Overall: - High DPS. - Speed of over 100. - Nigh impenetrable AC. - High to hit bonus. - Does magical damage that ignores most martial damage resistances. - Can still cast fireball.
Nice! Bladesingers are often considered very good, but having a different build for it that still works is great. and 1/2 damage on fireball is still awesome.
Half damage on fireball? What do you mean?
With lower INT enemies will save more often, but even so it doesn't matter. The damage is still good if you hit enough enemies.
Oh yeah, and let's be real pretty much everything makes the save at high levels regardless. He's level 7 with an 18 DEX and a 16 INT so it's passable. DM wouldn't let me do extended point buy to get a 20 DEX... something about the store policy forcing him to use point arrays
Adventurers League? Yeah, that's how they roll. They also sometimes enforce the rule that you can't use more than 2 sourcebooks and the PHB in your build.
Yep that's the one. Kinda sucks because point buy lets you do way more things
Command spell. That's it, base everything around casting the command spell, eventually the BBEG will just have to grovel.
I like Command. I was reading something earlier today where a fight with a Devil of some kind was shut down when after it gated in, the cleric just cast command and said, "Return." It walked right back through the gate and that was that.
I loved playing a fighter champion! V. Human for great weapon master, and chose great weapon fighting for those sweet sweet re-rolls
Cavalier Fighter, for some reason I always forget this subclass exists but my god is it actually a very decent class that FEELS like it’s a fighter subclass. A lot of the other can feel like “oooh magical flavour” whereas the cavalier just feels like a FIGHTER
>I often "ground and pound" enemies which is completely RAW, and often do some improvised stuff like cuffing them with manacles Unironically a *fantastic* combat technique for fighters and even some rogues. Grapple, prone, manacles is a great way to end an encounter in a single round if you can pull it off (Action Surge and the Thief subclass' Fast Hands both help here). "Grapplemancy" in general is a really underrated combat technique because it can be hard to close distance on an enemy, and some creatures in the Monster Manual can't even be grappled-- but if you can pull it off, it's well worthwhile.
A surpsingly effective combination for Eldrich Knights is using their 'War Magic' and casting 'Blade Ward'. As an Action then attacking once as a Bonus Action. It's a non-resource way to boost your defences and still get an attack and from levels 7-10 it shouldn't be overlooked. Yes there are better classes, better abilities... But it is one of the few which doesn't require resources to enact. Add in Heavy Armour Master to the mix and for as long as you need to... You can tank like a Barbarian, except you can also cast Blur on yourself for an extra 'screw you' as you hold the enemies at the door. Oh, and you still get to attack once a round :)
Barb/Druid multi. The most common thing I see about is that it’s just a health sink which is true, but it means I can do some pretty dumb stuff and just shrug it off. The only HP that matters is the last one, the harder it is for them to get me to it, the more nonsense I can do beforehand.
Can a Drubarian use Rage with WildShape? I’ve always been curious about that
Yes. Wild shape isn’t a spell, and doesn’t require concentration. A raging wildshaped bear is absolutely dominant in the first few levels.
HOLY SHIT THATS INCREDIBLE
If you really want your mind blown, divine smite is technically not a spell either, it just uses a spell slot.
Wildshape by itself is pretty unbalanced at levels 1-5. But it falls off at later levels. Not that it's bad but it just isn't great in-combat-numbers-wise, it just never is as gamebreaking as at the first few levels. Throwing Rage on top of it is just steroids.
I’m partial to EKs/ EK-Wizard Multis dropping two spells on a turn with Action Surge and Metamagic Adept for twinning. Most enemies feel like chumps when you’re smashing them with the twinned chromatic orb twice. It’s a nova strat so I don’t see people flock to it, but I still dig it.
It sounds fun. I've been wanting to play a EK for a while, but ended up making a STR based ranger build instead. Decent Gish, actually. What's your favorite thing you pulled off with your EK?
I used the Hold Person+Scorching Ray combo on my last EK-Wizard. The paralyzed crit effect comes into effect when you’re within 5 ft, so it Dm doesn’t matter if you’re throwing a ranger attack. Felt great to finish a champion with the “Stand proud, you’re strong” type hit.
I played a chronurgy harengon, and the most powerful spell I ever cast was levitate. No save after the first, and then the BBEG was just stuck floating in mid-air, for the whole fight, and had no way to reach me to make me break concentration, thanks to a wall that I could duck behind.
For a game that ran at levels 8-14 I ran a Swashbuckler Rogue 5/Swords Bard 9 multiclass. Cunning action, jack of all trades, extra attack, sneak attack, spellcasting... and my favorite part, +11 to initiative rolls. I dunno how powerful it was, but it was a lot of fun to play. I'm looking forward to our level 15-20 sequel when I can add magical secrets into the mix.
Phantom rouge. It is very good at dealing damage to multiple people every attack with its wails from the grave and at higher levels is able to deal and additionally 5d6ish damage to the target you just hit with sneak attack. So around 13d6 damage to 1 target. Actually able to take some decent hits since they are 1 of 2 ways to modify your death saving throws. Your soul coins can do A lot to help with both combat and RP situations and you can get them back from being used after a creature of any sort dies within 30ft of you. So almost limitless uses with how much damage you can do
I'm about to start Light of Xaryxis this Saturday. A player has made a Brougebarian. Level 1 Barbarian and level 4 Rogue. He's gomma be raging from stealth lol I can see it.
Mage hand is underrated
Using battlerager as a non-magic disabler. RAW, you can use the shove action to knock someone prone, then grapple them so they can’t move. Instant advantage to any of your melee friends. Also disadvantage on dex saves. Alternatively, you could use their ability to restrain both you and the one you’re grappling. That may not sound great on paper, but if your table uses the “using creatures as cover” rules, it’s actually really viable.
Personally i considered ranger as totally useless… than i discovered the gloomstalker subclass
Our level 6 gloomstalker pumped out ~100 damage in a single turn iirc, may have been two but it was ridiculous
Now imagine someone grabbing action surge and maybe some useful rogue features on top of
The only thing I dislike about Gloomstalker is that it makes every other ranger subclass pointless. There's no good reason to take any other subclass unless your DM homebrews some additional features to bring them up to par with it. I've seen far too many Bugbear Gloomstalkers/Fighter combos who rely on Dread Ambusher, Surprise Attack, Action Surge and Sharpahooter to end encounters on their first round or so.
I've said it multiple times: Levitate is a top tier control spell.
Highly depends on the campaign and master but something simple like darkness trivializes most combats. It's not very frequent that enemies can see in the *magic* dark or run to a safe location. (Ofc DM may give them the ex machina to perfectly run to a safe location outside your dark dome. Telepathy is also a great way to madden a target. Someone speaking/screaming in your mind while you try to concentrate, have a normal conversation or even rest, is powerful.
I made a horizon walker ranger for a one-shot. I gave him great weapon master and heavy armor proficiency. He could hit once, teleport behind to hit somebody else a couple times, then teleport to tanking position. He wasn't the best, I could have optimized him better with other feats or multi classing, but he was fun.
Are planned shenanigans ok? Rogue + four elements monk. I use water whip to knock a enemy prone then sneak attack on my flurry of blows.
That sounds awesome, actually....
And you can use fist of unbroken air to launch a foe 20ft towards an ally and knock it prone.
You *might* talk me into making a way of 4 elements monk...
No kidding, and here I thought it was well received
Oh, don't get me wrong, I love the idea. The limitation is time
NY brother once killed our DM's BBEG in session for by grappling him, ***KISSING*** him so he couldn't speak, and then just crushing him to death in a lover's embrace a la Ainz Ooal Gown
Fighters built to grapple, trip, and then curbstomp a fool who can't get back up are pretty great.
I love mine.
I had a character who took the Sharpshooter feat and the Gunner feat. The result is a character who uses mostly nets without disadvantage. This character borderline broke Curse of Strahd. A sun-soul monk with spell sniper gets a free cantrip and also doubles the range of their unarmed strikes to 60 feet, creating the ultimate skirmish class for a medium+ sized party
Grease. If your DM is remotely cool, you’re largely limited by your imagination. I think a lot of low level magic has so much room for imagination that higher spells often lose for the sake of raw power - but I’m one to pick almost exclusively spells that would be on-flavor for my characters, so I use a lot of garbage magic.
An Echo Knight with Sentinel is a wondrous annoyance to any monster
Sleet Storm often is bagged on in guides and tier lists. Yet everytime I use when things are seeming hairy i shut down multiple monsters allowing the party to deal with fewer enemies.
My player used Cutting Words to reduce aoe spell damage. Everyone else were using that ability just to make attacks miss, so I did not even remember, that reducing dmg is allowed.
I’m already plotting to make heavy use of defensive duelist and mage slayer for my next character.
People hate on Ranger and told me not to play them but I’ve played duel wielding colossus slayer and gloom stalker and both have been amazing
I've had arguments with people and proved to them with math that my ranger could outdamage they're whatever else, but has utility, too. Was pretty fun.
Nothing can save a party drom a tpk like healing multiple downed characters with an Aid in lower levels. What do you mean have to choose who to heal????
Archery focused Kensei monk. Ridiculous mobility, average 80-100 damage a turn. Nothing can really get a hold of him.
There are so many dnd rules I don't know! When you say, "Well, half proficiency," is that a class feature or something, or are you just haggling?
It's a class feature of Champion Fighters. At level 7 they get 1/2 proficiency in any Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity checks they are otherwise not proficient in. This doesn't include Saving Throws, but it does include Initiative checks.
Thanks! I'm running my second Curse of Strahd campaign right now, have been playing D&D since before I could read, but it seems there's always more to know! And of course my memory isn't quite the steel trap it once was!
Phantom steed is amazing
Artificer Infusions let you replicate an uncommon magic item instead of the default ones listed. It specifies you can't make scrolls or potions, but nothing says you can't make spellwrought tattoos. This means you can basically cast any Level 1 spell from any class once per long rest without requiring any material components, and if the spell has a duration, the tattoo doesn't vanish until the spell ends. This lets you do some fun stuff. You can give your entire party a Familiar each (reminder that anyone can cast Touch-ranged spells like Cure Wounds or Inflict Wounds through their familiar, and Owls have the flyby feature), or cast Zephyr Strike once per day with your Armorer Artificer, or Ceremony, Bless, Hex, Gift of Alacrity, Shield, Silvery Barbs, etc.
Patient Defense and Sanctuary on my Open Hand monk while blocking a 5ft wide corridor. Good luck hitting me.